US Defence Secretary faults Congress for weakening military

Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, has accused Congress of dumping a "crisis on my doorstep" by holding the Pentagon to last year's spending levels,creating a potential $23 billion gap that could weaken a wartime military.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned of emergency cuts if the Pentagon is forced to live within last year's means when it had planned for morePhoto: REUTERS

10:55PM GMT 27 Jan 2011

"That's how you hollow out a military," Mr Gates said Thursday.

Mr Gates said it looks increasingly likely that Congress will not act on the Pentagon's 2011 budget request, even as lawmakers argue over his proposal to slow the rate of increase in defense spending next year and freeze it by 2015.

The opposition is bipartisan - from Republicans who oppose any reductions and Democrats along with some Republicans backed by the Tea Party who say Gates isn't cutting enough.

Rhetoric on all sides ignores "the real world that I live in," Mr Gates said.

He warned of emergency cuts if the Pentagon is forced to live within last year's means when it had planned for more.

Related Articles

Congress has not acted on the $549 billion request for the budget year that began on October 1. It instead passed a stop-gap government spending measure last fall, keeping budgets at the previous year's levels. For the Pentagon, that means a budget of about $526 billion, officials say, not counting war funding.

Mr Gates said the separate request for spending on wars will fall to about $120 billion for 2012 from about $159 billion this year, reflecting the planned final troop withdrawal from Iraq.

But the Pentagon will face a money pinch that "could have an impact on training across the entire force," and in other areas, Mr Gates said.

"It's one thing to talk about 2012 and then to express concerns about something that may or may not happen in four or five years," he said. "But I have a crisis on my doorstep. And I want them to deal with the crisis on my doorstep before we start arguing about the levels (of spending) in 2012."

The debate over defense spending next year and beyond was on full display Wednesday at a House Armed Services Committee hearing, where Republicans posed tough questions about the risks of slashing too deep and shortchanging U.S. forces.

If Mr Gates retires this summer, as many believe likely, he will have been one of the longest-serving defense secretaries since the post was created in 1947. He started in December 2006, succeeding Donald H. Rumsfeld, who resigned amid heavy criticism over the Iraq war.

Mr Gates has fashioned himself into a guardian of the US military's global pre-eminence, but he also has cautioned that military muscle can be an illusion.

"Possessing the ability to annihilate other militaries is no guarantee we can achieve our strategic goals," he told Army officers in May.

In that same vein, he launched his current effort to preserve military strength while accepting that the nation's grim financial condition .

He demanded that the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps find $100 billion in budget savings over the coming five years, while allowing them to keep most of that savings for other needs.

The military services responded with investments in a modernized fleet of Army tanks, more strike and surveillance drone aircraft for the Navy and Air Force, and more missile interceptors for use in an expanded missile defense system in Europe.